Stress and the trade-off between hippocampal and striatal memory

Stress can strongly influence memory, in part by modulating the relative engagement of multiple memory systems. Over the last fifteen years, researchers have demonstrated that stress leads striatal, rather than hippocampal, memory to be dominant in both humans and non-human animals. This shift has been proposed to explain the etiology and maintenance of symptoms of stress-related psychopathology. However, it remains unclear how hippocampal and striatal memory are affected individually in order to facilitate this trade-off. Recent studies provide empirical support for (at least) three different pathways by which stress could modulate these memory systems. Evidence for these diverse effects of stress, and circumstances under which each might occur, are discussed.